April 3 -- Second Sunday of Easter

He is risen!  … Alleluias abound.  We are Easter people with signs of the resurrection all around us and around this world.  Christ is deeply present in our pain and in our joy.  In our hope and in our sorrow.  Christ is as close to us as our very breath! ...

So what’s Jesus doing ascending into heaven, as we read today?  Why’s he leaving us?  Why’s that closeness shrinking and shrinking as he lifts up into the clouds?  I thought he’s always promised to stay with us.  

Oh well, let’s just wait.  I’m sure he’ll be back.  [stand looking up]  

Will you wait with me?  It’s very Christian to wait, together…

I’m being a little silly right now, but this may be a little how those disciples long ago felt:  Can you imagine the joy that they had just experienced on reuniting with their friend?  Forget for a moment all the theological implications of Jesus’ resurrection—these men and women had their brother, their son, their favorite teacher, their friend back!  

But just as soon as he’s back in the flesh—walking with them down their roads, fishing in their waters, sitting around their tables—he’s gone again…this time ascended into heaven.

So they’ll wait, and long, and gaze upward:  

The text says, “While Jesus was going and they were gazing up toward heaven, suddenly two men in white robes stood by them.”

Jesus hadn’t even been gone for but a few moments -- and they could probably still see him way up there (like when a little one accidentally lets go of a red helium balloon, and we all watch it drifting up and up) -- and angelic strangers are sidling up next to them!   Jesus was never even gone completely and angels are already sidling up!

How we too may be caught staring at the heavens.  How nice it is to “gaze up,” to enjoy the serenity, to be wistful.   

Maybe not literally, do we gaze at the sky.  We’re busy, productive, task-oriented, egotistical types here.  But what is your drifting balloon that you gaze up at dreamily?  [pause]

Paying off the house?  Retiring in fine style?  Keeping the kids perfectly safe and sound?  Finishing the backyard?  Just getting to heaven?

All nice things, to be sure; pretty normal really.

But our God doesn’t operate in the realm of “pretty normal really”!  Jesus doesn’t just leave us gazing up.  And he doesn’t drop us a ladder from on high either, affirming our longings and blissful dreams, so that we can leave all this behind.  (Left Behind is wrong.)

Instead Jesus sends angels sometimes in the form of other human beings, sidling up, to snap us out of our gazes [“suddenly”], and to position us for ministry in this world.  These angels locate us.     

When we stare at the sky, we see no one else.  I wouldn’t even know if you were here or if you left, if just kept staring at the sky.  I wouldn’t know where I am.  And I might not even care.  

But when I’m snapped out of my gazing up, I see you, I see us, I see the corner of Avocado and Fury, I see the hungry and sad.  

[for me: gazing up = wanting to yell at my neighbor with a great reason, snapped out = call from Cheri about her dad]  For you?

These angels snap us out of our gazing and locate us, help us to see.

And this is just Luke’s version.   (The author of Acts is the author of Luke.)  In Matthew’s version there is no ascension story, Jesus in fact never does leave.  Jesus says, “Lo, I am with you always.”

[And my systematic theology professor’s interpretation on this story in Acts: Jesus comes to us from beneath. “Jesus will come in the same way as you saw him go up into heaven.”]

Whether its angels or Jesus himself or the poor, we have our focal point re-adjusted again today.  From gazing at the sky to seeing the sister or brother, and what really matters, right before us.  

And then starts a wonderful progression, a holy procession.  “You shall be my witnesses in Jerusalem, in all Judea and Samaria [cross that border], and to the ends of the earth.”  

We are called to be witnesses, sisters and brothers in Christ, witnesses to the resurrection 1) in Jerusalem – those who are hurting in Spring Valley, El Cajon, La Mesa,  downtown San Diego.  2) in Judea and Samaria – that is both in our country and across our borders – those who are hurting in Arizona and Mexico, in Florida and Cuba, in the flood plains of Louisiana and Colombia.  And then, to the ends of the earth -- Madagascar, Afghanistan, Bakersfield.  

WE are called to be witnesses, schematically from Jerusalem to the ends of the earth -- sharing the Spirit of Truth, the Word of Life, Bread of Heaven, the Cup of Salvation.  

Teresa of Avila prayer:  God of love, help us to remember that Christ has no body now on earth but ours, no hands but ours, no feet but ours.  Ours are the eyes to see the needs of the world.  Ours are the hands with which to bless everyone now.  Ours are the feet with which he is to go about doing good.

And, we’re not alone.  You’re not alone.  Christ goes with us as we witness, for Christ gives us that same Spirit which both enlivens us, gives us the courage and strength we need to go forth, and it binds us together.  We are never offering our hands to Christ’s work alone.  Even if the whole Christian church around the world dwindles, dwindles, dwindles there will always be two or three gathering, reading Scripture, sharing the meal, and being sent in Christ’s name!  [slowly]  You are not alone.  We are called together, bound by the Spirit, nourished by Christ’s body and blood, and sent.

I love that at the end of this text, after this amazing experience of being dispatched locally, nationally and internationally, after the ascension and the angels, from gazing to seeing, from dreaming to scheming—after it all...the disciples returned to Jerusalem, a Sabbath day’s walk from where they experienced all this.  They don’t go out from the hillside of the Ascension:  first they gather. And they start this whole mission into the world in prayer.  “They devoted themselves in prayer.”  

That’s a picture of a Sunday morning!  A Sabbath day’s walk.  Devoting ourselves in prayer.  Telling and rehearsing the sacred story to ourselves again before we carry it outward.  Pausing for a moment to give thanks that God is both up there and right here, at the very same time.  Lifting our hands in gestures of thanksgiving, that this world is not ours to rescue, but only ours to serve.  Opening our arms in a gesture of openness of heart and mind, for God to take us once again this day, and mold us into a people with eyes set not on the cluster of clouds and a one-track dream, but on the cluster of sisters and brothers across the tables and across the borders, and a one-track Gospel message of LOVE.  

We are gathered, we are baptized, we are fed, and we are sent...with God’s many and various angles, sidled up right next to us all the way.  Let’s tell the story with joy.  Thanks be to God!  AMEN.